iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

What a treat to get something in the post that you completely forgot you’d pre-ordered. Thanks to @markabowles.bsky.social, @galleybeggars.bsky.social and my past self.

A copy of Mark Bowles’s new book, How Do People Stay the Same.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

The secondhand section of Heffers was particularly fruitful today. I took advantage. French literature mostly. Balzac. Flaubert. Sand. More. As I was tottering up the stairs with an armful of paperbacks, I was stopped by another customer and, somewhat peremptorily, asked where the board games were.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Am I followed by anyone who knows anything about poster restoration? I’ve fished this magnificent thing out of the roof after nearly a decade and it’s (I suppose inevitably) crumpled. How can I flatten Monsieur Hulot? I want him on display again.

A framed poster of Les Vacances de M. Hulot that’s showing its age. There are wrinkles. There are crinkles. There are folds. It doesn’t seem beyond all hope, but it’s clearly past its prime.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

“Oh! It’s Bookshop Day!” I remarked to my girlfriend this morning. “What does that even mean?” she said. “EVERY day is bookshop day for you.” It’s a fair point. I bought only one book today. I hope others fared better than I did.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

A very Waugh-heavy haul from the second-hand/charity shops yesterday. The biographies are upgrades and I already have a volume of his letters, but still. Dreadful man, wonderful novelist. (Although his early funny novels are of course infinitely better than late, sentimental ones.)

Spoils of Waugh: five hardback books, bought after a trawl through Cambridge’s many charity shops and G David (I think the only remaining second-hand bookshop). Three are Evelyn Waugh biographies (Stannard and Hastings); two are collections of letters (to/from Nancy Mitford and Lady Diana Cooper).

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

If the phrase ‘magpie mind’ could be embodied in a single photo, I suspect this one of my bedside table could be a contender for the top ten.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

The arrival of a new Nicola Barker book is always, always a cause for celebration. I bloody love her.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Writers rightly wonder whether Bluesky is a reasonable promotional platform. Ten minutes ago, I hadn’t heard of Ben Pester. Then I chanced upon him thanks to @guyware.bsky.social and read this Observer review. Now, I’ve ordered his novel.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Recent acquisition. Absolutely fascinating and I already want more of this sort of thing. Can anyone recommend similar titles about suppressed Russian writers? General ones rather than books about specific writers, I mean. Although specifics probably wouldn’t go amiss.

Shentalinsky’s book The KGB’s Literary Archive – The Discovery of the Ultimate Fate of Russia’s Suppressed Writers.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

One for @nicholasroyle.bsky.social: an insertion in a second-hand copy of Despair by Nabokov.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

@cbeditions.bsky.social It might just be because it’s a pre-order, but when I click ‘Add to cart’ on the 176 Interruptions product page (www.cbeditions.com/boyle5.html) I’m taken to a PayPal error page. (Apologies for bearing bad news but it might be something you can/would like to fix.)

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Passed a load of buttercups earlier. Tried the old “why people leave buttocks lying around, I have no idea” joke (S Fry, 1992) on my children. Barely a titter. Sophisticated lot, the modern-day under-10s.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

An excellent book day: the wonderful Eimear McBride at the Cambridge Literary Featival and a very handsome copy of Hackenfeller’s Ape from Oxfam for only £1.99.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Some light reading having finished packing my library and Packing My Library. The first couple of paragraphs of the first chapter made me chuckle.

In the foreground, a copy of So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid. In the background, many, many boxes full of so many books.

The text reads:

An Embarrassment of Books

THOSE WHO ASPIRE to the status of cultured individuals visit bookshops with trepidation, overwhelmed by the immensity of all they have not read. They buy something that they’ve been told is good, make an unsuccessful attempt to read it, and when they have accumulated half a dozen unread books, feel so bad that they are afraid to buy more.

In contrast, the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Something I do have whose authenticity I don’t doubt (the provenance is sound) is this letter from John Betjeman, which I found tucked in a book I bought a few years ago.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Anyone know Frank Kermode’s handwriting? This copy of Keats’s letters appears to have been his. (I’m also cynical enough to presume it wasn’t his.)

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Further thrilling dispatches from my book-packing adventures (far better than back-packing, I’d say): a stack of Sparks. For years, I thought of her merely as the author of Jean Brodie, so what a delight it was to discover how incredibly funny and bizarre she could be.

A pile of Polygon/Birlinn editions of Muriel Spark’s novels, which were released to celebrate her centenary.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

I had no idea I had so many of these. Most date from when I was a student in the late ‘90s, when you could pick them up in Oxfam for 39p each. What would it be now? Three or four quid? More for the earlier ones. Seems inflation-busting to me. Perhaps they are a sound investment after all.

P-p-pick up a Penguin: the picture shows a couple of shelves of Penguin paperbacks bearing their 1950s tri-band design.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Grouping books by size is obviously the most efficient use of packing space. Books that stay apart on the shelves are therefore joined by their fellows in the box. So here’s a claw of Panthers. They look handsome together, don’t they? But why do I have two copies of Perec’s A Void?

A couple of piles of Harvill Panther books.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

A bit premature as I’m not moving for at least another couple of months, but I’ve begun packing my library – always a rather harrowing experience and the only time I’m willing to concede that I might own too many books. Just to warn you, I’m likely to bang on about this task over the coming weeks.

In the foreground, a copy of Alberto Manguel’s book ‘Packing my Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions’; in the background, a wall of shelves containing books that need to be packed.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Oh! @plsoc.bsky.social has followed me back. Let’s have a Larkin shelfie…

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

It seems quite a few people are planning to read Proust this year. I picked up this lovely set a few years ago, when @backlisted.bsky.social did its Proustmas special, and found the companion guide in Oxfam only a few weeks ago. I probably ought to give it a go. At last. Pass me a madeleine…

The three-volume 1980s Chatto edition of Scott-Moncrieff’s translation of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, plus A Guide to Proust.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

A sight that brings me joy in both the morning and the afternoon…

PG Wodehouse books, mostly in the Everyman edition.

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